Dry Eyed Tears
by ArianaRae
Summary: "So you look him straight in the eye, and you tell him that you cry dry-eyed tears."


Disclaimer- Not mine. Hasn't been, isn't now, and sadly, never shall be.

Summary- When all you cry are dry-eyed tears, you feel as one Harry Potter.

Warnings- Contains neglect and abuse. Nothing too gory. Don't like, don't read.

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_Dry-eyed, you cannot cry._

You are three years old, and you scrape your knee on the driveway. Sobbing, you run to your Aunt Petunia, and with a heavy sigh, she tosses you a wet towel and tells you to go to your cupboard. Sadly but obligingly, you, still sniffling, crawl inside with a small sniff. You flinch as the door slams and you are engulfed in dark. You, being a scared and pained small child, start crying harder. As your tears become louder, so do the household sounds. Your aunt is blocking you out.

After a good few minutes, you realize, however subconsciously, that no one is going to come and help you.

_And you want to know, want to know why…_

That was the last time you shed a tear. You are six now. It is your first day of primary school, and you are so excited for all the new opportunities. The day goes fine, apart from a small sneer from your cousin. Then comes lunch. You wonder if anyone would want to sit with you. Shrugging aside your concerns, you ask a boy if you can sit next to him. He nods, and, feeling elated, you set your lunch on the tabletop and pull up a seat. You notice he has features relative to a rat, but surely it doesn't matter, because he's nice. You ask his name. Nonchalantly, he tells you that it's Piers. He asks yours. You think nothing of it. You tell him that your name is Harry Potter. His eyes widen, and he gives a wicked grin that scares you slightly. Because you've seen that grin before…

Piers calls out, and your cousin comes waddling over. Piers asks him if it's true, if you are really his cousin. The fat boy looks at you with a surprising amount of disdain for a boy so young, and says yes. Piers laughs, and looks you up and down. He asks Dudley if you look like a scrawny loser to him too, or is it just him. You feel a lump in your throat, but no tears come. Dudley taunts you, asking if you're a wimp or just too stupid to reply? You start to shake and you want to scream, but you don't cry. There's a strange wind now. You feel it rustling your already messy hair, but none else notices. Both boys next to you are still laughing, but as the wind reaches them, they suddenly go silent. Trying to yell, they find they can't. They glare at you with hate in their eyes, and Piers lunges at you. Terrified, you run, and you don't stop 'til you're safely in the library, hiding next to a tall shelf. You're confused and hurt.

And you still can't cry.

_The whole wide world left you, yeah, it left you alone._

Now you are eight. You've a letter from the school headmistress in your hand. It explains that today, during math, you somehow turned Miss Murray's hair a shockingly bright blue. You are scared. Dudley rode ahead of you on his shiny new bike, so while you are still at the end of the driveway, he's already dumped it on the bushes and gone inside. You reach the door as well, and take a deep breath to steel your nerves. Trembling, you open the door and step inside.

You see your aunt bustling to get biscuits for Dudley, and your uncle going to hang up his backpack. Setting your things down in your cupboard, you slowly go into the kitchen. Silently, you set the letter on the table and try to slink away. Your uncle picks up the letter and reads it, face slowly turning puce. You are almost to the hall when he yells for you to come back. You turn back and gaze warily at him, your eyes wide with fright. He lets out a feral hiss. In a menacingly low voice, he asks you what you did. Frantically, you say you didn't mean anything. He replies that it's not good enough to be sorry unless you mean it. He grabs you by the hair and slaps you across the face, then throws you bodily into the cupboard under the stairs.

You sit up shakily, rubbing a sore spot on your head and feeling so, so lonely.

_To suffer through, through those dry-eyed tears._

Skip ahead to when you're age twelve. In the short space of four years, you've discovered magic, found out that you're a celebrity in a different world, made friends for the first time in your life, and escaped your parents' killer once more. At your school of magic, a secret chamber has been opened and students are being attacked. You are to blame in most peoples' minds. They are avoiding you, ridiculing you, fearing you, and you are powerless.

You're on your way to your dormitory, and you hear laughing. You glance back. As soon as you make eye contact with them, they stop laughing. Their eyes widen and they scurry off, clearly scared. You hike your bag up on your shoulder and you laugh a bitter laugh, storming the rest of the way. Once you get to your dorm, you toss your books down and fall backwards out onto your bed. Seamus and Dean come into the dorm. Upon seeing you, Seamus whispers something in Dean's ear, eyes narrowed maliciously. Dean glances over at you and sniggers.

They leave, free to do as they wish, but until you can bear the hurt, you are trapped.

_You awake screaming, near every night._

It is the summer after fourth year. You are plagued with nightmares, a scene of death playing in your head night after night. Cedric Diggory's blank face tortures you. You see him fall; you see him land with a sickening thud. Jerking awake, you clap a hand over your mouth and edge nervously to the wall to listen for your uncle. No one comes banging on your door, but only after a good ten minutes of tense waiting do you relax and slump back onto your bed.

You close your eyes and hate yourself for suggesting that he and you take the cup together. If you hadn't been such a noble, stupid prat, maybe he'd still be alive and you wouldn't have killed him. Because deep inside, you know that you killed him. Your outer shell nods and gives Hermione a reassuring smile when she tells you quietly that you couldn't have done anything, but you know. You know that you could have and the guilt eats you from the inside out.

_But never once did you cry._

Anger. Grief. Loneliness. Confusion. One summer later, and he's gone now, your last bit of real family, because no matter how good of a mate Ron is, he's always just that. A friend, and he can't see, no one can, how utterly, gut-wrenchingly terrible it is to have your family torn apart for reasons you can't comprehend. All because you were lazy; you couldn't be bothered to learn what needed to be learned. And now you've killed again. Through your recklessness, you raced off to help someone who was safe at home. And it killed him. You were so naïve. Rushing off; completely fooled by imagery and deceit.

Fifteen years old, and you've already become a murderer. And whatever childhood innocence wasn't scrapped in the years before falls away now, as you learn that if you wish to remain alive, you must kill again. But you don't know if you can; if you're strong enough. And you know that the popular image of immunity, of a boy with nothing to fear, is nothing but a myth. Smoke and mirrors, caught up in concealment and lies. And in spite of this, no one looks past the shell.

Because no one wants to see weakness in a hero.

_Carrying on, strength beyond your years, _

They all press in, wanting a bit of the glory, the bravery, and you are numb. Numb to the pain, numb to the death, numb to the world. You manage to escape them all, and you talk to the people you need to see, and then you sleep. And when you wake up, it crashes over you, one big wave of hurt. And it's agony. You can't stand it. You can't. And then you remember your friends, and the pain recedes a bit, only to be doubled when you remember the poor little boy with ever-changing hair, orphaned in war. And you retch at the sheer amount of death, and you throw things, and you tear things. And then you think of the funerals.

You stare at the ground, hot and uncomfortable in your dress robes. Everyone around you is sobbing, and then someone pulls you aside. You peer up through your fringe at Ron, his eyes red and wet, and he asks you angrily if you feel nothing at all for the victims, and if you do, then why aren't you crying? And you can't blame him, for you've done similar things during grief.

So you look him straight in the eye, and you tell him that you cry dry-eyed tears.

_To live a life, of dry-eyed tears._

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AN- That was fun to write.

Comments are amazing, constructive criticism welcome and embraced, flames laughed at.

-ArianaRae


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